|
Director Christophe Barratier
Christophe Barratier, is a classical guitarist, is a graduate of the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and winner of several international guitar competitions. In 1991, he joined Jacques Perrin's was hired by Jacques Perrin to join Galatée Films. He where he acted as associate producer on Children of Lumiere (Les Enfants de Lumière), Microcosmos, Himalaya and Winged Migration. In 2001, he directed his first film, a short subject starring Lambert Wilson and Carole Weiss, based on Maupassant's novella story "Les Tombales." Broadcast on Canal+ and FR3, it was in selection at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival. Produced by Galatée Films and co-written with Philippe Lopes-Curval, Les Choristes is Christophe Barratier's first feature film.
INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHE BARRATIER
Why did you decide to base your first film on start from Jean Dréville's 1945 film La Cage aux rossignols (A Cage of Nightingales) for your first feature film?
After Les Tombales, my short film subject, I was looking around for a good story for my first a feature film.. I realized that the notes I was taking were sort of linked to my early childhood, to the emotions I felt between the ages of four and eight. Also, given my musical education, I really wanted to do a story that had to do with music. So naturally, the combination of music and childhood led me to remember La Cage aux rossignols. I saw that film when I was about seven or eight, in 1970 or 1971, on one of the two only main TV stations back then. As a child, I was deeply moved profoundly touched by it. The film is now It's practically forgotten but its the film's charm subsists. And it hasn't been sanctified as a "masterpiece" of French cinema either, which made makes it less dangerous to adapt.
There are The two most vivid memories main things that stayed with me were- the emotion produced by the children's voices and the character of the a failed musician who tries, in spite of everything, to do something to transform the world of the people around him. That's what I like in movies. In fact, the films which have influenced me the most all have this in common - how one individual can help make the world more livable. I know a film won't change things, but it can make you want to try. I like coming out of the theater feeling like I want to identify with the main character. Clément Mathieu's teaching isn't limited to music lessons, there's a life lesson as well. The movie has three themes - early childhood, music, and the passing of the torch.
Were you tempted to transpose the story to the present day?
Never. For a very simple reason. Making a story about a man who teaches singing to children today would mean first of all addressing who those children are. You'd have to get into issues like housing projects, chronic unemployment, assimilation, juvenile delinquency, and that wasn't what I wanted to do… There's also the status of the main character. Clément Mathieu, as a teacher today, would have other priorities. He would be nothing like the music teacher of the fifties.
Why put the accent on childhood?
Because it's a the most universal theme. : Projecting yourself into the past allows you to escape current issues so you can concentrate on what is shared most widely throughout the world -everybody remembers the feeling of injustice and abandonment that a child feels when his parents are absent or deceased, the rebellion and inhibitions that can stem from it lead to.
Whatever the social background of the children cast in the film, they needed only to put on the period costume to become children who shared the same fears, the same desires and the same sorrows.
Why set the film in 1949?
Making a film which takes place that year is not a neutral thing. SettingAfter the film in that precise year was intentional. Indeedwar, reintegration centers, commonly called "correctional houses" were set up right after the war.. The Youth Protection Service (PJJ, or Protection Judiciare de la Jeunesse) was created during the same period, giving children a different legal status than adults. It was the very beginning of a sort of official child psychology, with all the wanderings goes with it that can suppose. It was also the start of psychologicalPsychological profiling was done of children, in what was a well-intentioned desire to "oversee" them. These methods hinted at in the film seem of course, very problematic to us today, which are evoked in the film, seem problematic to us today. The late forties, finally, was a period of trauma. We were just coming out of the war and, as in all periods of crisis, parents had other things to deal with than bringing up their children.
Did you immediately think of Gérard Jugnot for the role of Clément Mathieu?
Yes. He's also co-producer of the film. I have a lot of confidence in his judgment - he's an excellent reader. He read all three drafts of the script and each time gave me some very savvy advice. He has uncanny instincts about script problems and he knows how to anticipate the audience's expectations, in the best sense of that term - that is, giving them films works they might like, not the ones they like already. His contributions were contribution was always right to the on point. He introduced me to Philippe Lopes-Curval, with whom he had just written Monsieur Batignole. Philippe had some very good ideas, especially in developing the characters' psychology - whether it was the schoolmaster played by François Berléand, for whom the children are the symbol of a failed career, or Chabert, played by Kad Merad.
How did you find the children?
First of all, I really wanted the role of the little soloist to be played by a real singer. I knew that wasn't easy to find, but I got incredibly lucky. As we toured France, listening to major children's choruses to pick the one for the film soundtrack, we discovered the young Jean-Baptiste Maunier, the soloist of "Petits chanteurs de Saint-Marc" in Lyons.. He has an exceptional and, very moving voice. When he nailed his acting auditions, I had made up my mind my mind was made up.
For the rest of the chorus, I didn't want "professional" child actors because I didn't want to fall into the trap of the "trained seal" syndrome. We went looking for kids around the area where we were shooting, in the region of Auvergne. Sylvie Brocheré and her assistant culled children talent from elementary and junior high schools around Clermont-Ferrand. After auditioning over 2000 kids children, I found enough "natural real actors" among them to complete the cast. Only the Parisians, Théodule Carré Cassaigne and Thomas Blumenthal, had any acting experience at all and they blended in with the "neophytes" very smoothly. As for Maxence Perrin (Pépinot), Jacques' son, this was of course his first experience. At first, they all sang along to play-back reference recordings we had made with the chorus in Lyons, but very quickly that was no longer necessary. Although they were all complete novices, they learned all the pieces by heart and sang them with unbelievable energy.
Besides the casting, what were was the most vital elements of the production crucial element?
The sets. I wanted to visually re-create an austere and practically threatening place - giving the emotion preference over realism. In actual fact, when you look at pictures from the period, the buildings were classic public school type buildings, familiar and reassuring. But I wanted an oversized building, something imposing and inhospitable, really off the scale, so I could communicate the sensations of a child, for whom everything is bigger and more impressive than reality.
What choices did you make as a director using those sets?
First, I wanted to film it in scope so I could signify the crushing isolation of these tiny children at the center of the frame. We had to have a fairly large frame to film the whole of the main set, the classroom. We were ready to depart a little from reality lose a little of the realistic side in order to convey the feeling that we're. We're not in a mere classroom but , we're in a world peopled with by some special characters.
I'm also very fond of a style which, in musical terms, is called legato, that is, "connected" or "flowing." I prefer that to a frantic frenetic and shaky style. That brings down the number of Fewer shots, but there are more travellings shots, pans, dissolves and fades to black. I also wanted elegant transitions from scene to scene, especially in the sung parts with singing, which had to work with some quick cuts following a certain musical rhythm. At the sound mix, we worked on the evolution of the voices in the chorus, using the sound quality and even the musical quality to our advantage. We had to give the audience the sense of that time was passing by, just as the voices from the chorus were also evolving, based on the musical evolution of the chorus.
What about the music?
Bruno Coulais and I started working in September 2002, nine months before the shoot. I wanted to avoid the "children's chorus" feel color, with your the typical Christmas carols and evenings around the fireplace songs.. The music had to be really strong, almost completely original and not from hardly touching an existing repertory. The music we hear in the story is that of Clément Mathieu, so we varied the genres and the musical climates according to the character's evolution. Making this film was often like making a musical comedy.
Now that the film is completed, what do you take away from it?
The feeling that I had been unconsciously walking around with this story inside me for a long time. Telling it probably allowed me to exorcise certain events of my own life, since I was a child musician. It was good therapy, allowing some closure about my childhood, which wasn't an unhappy one at all but was at times difficult and which, like many other people, made me fragile. I also got the chance to talk about music, which remains one of my life's passions. Like Clément Mathieu, I never had my musical career. One day I just gave it all up. I knew I would have to talk about it one day, if only to decide whether that move was courageous or cowardly. I think you can pretty much guess who decode what I am through each of the characters in Les Choristes… and that includes the schoolmaster!
INTERVIEW WITH GÉRARD JUGNOT
How did you come to be Clément Mathieu?
I've known Christophe Barratier for a pretty long time. We share a taste for vintage French cinema, with all those films which starred old French actors they called the "eccentrics". The most iconic for me would be," including Noël Noël, for whom I admire no end. So one day Christophe told me about his desire to direct his version of La Cage aux Rossignols (A Cage of Nightingales). I first told him began saying that was great but that it could also turn out to be a "corny" idea: , with a guy getting kids to sing, saving them from solitude through a chorus. …You had to make a modern movie set in the not-too-distant past, because if it took place today, you'd have to transform my character into a teacher who teaches kids to rap in the inner city!. It could have wound up playing to the cheap seats. In the end, Christophe was very smart - setting the action in the very dramatic rich post-war period but also giving us a very moving scene which takes place in the present where a character thinks about his past and realizes that he owes his success to someone he has forgotten, who he's let on the wayside of fall away from his life. It's very nostalgic, extremely sincere and atypical, very much in keeping with what Jacques Perrin produces.
Did you read the various drafts of the script?
Yes. The first draft was perhaps a little too mellow smooth. We talked about it with Christophe and that's when we brought Philippe Lopes-Curval in. I know him well, and their collaboration strengthenedstregnthened the story, giving the characters some rough edges and therefore so a little more depth.
What was your decision to act in the film based on in the end made you decide to do the film?
A few dDifferentdifferent things. What I like about this movie is that it doesn't seem like a "first time director's" work. Also the musical aspect is surprising, really great. The music brings a true dynamic to the story, especially with the children singing. You can feel Christophe has as much passion for film as he does for music. In fact, he composed two of the pieces sung in the film, along with Bruno Coulais. The result is a film without sappiness, with all the earmarks of great emotion and evocative powers. It has the charm of writing on a blackboard, the charm of those musty childhoods we all had.
Your childhood?
Yes, it reminds me of my childhood in the sixties - which wasn't that harsh, but the feeling of boredom and abandon was there. It's something that's pretty universal.
How would you define your character?
He's a Chaplinesque character. More of a loser than Noël Noël in La Cage aux Rossignols who got married, wrote a book about his experience and winds up a sparkling success. In Christophe's film, Clément Mathieu is a man who didn't succeed as a musician but who acts so that others can succeed. This passer-of-the-flame side to the character moves touches me. People like him have drawn the curtain on their own personal lives. A lot of teachers have that kind of altruism. Of course, that begs the question of what really is success in life.
What helped you to play this character?
I paid a lot of attention to details in his physical appearance - wearing old shoes, never changing his suit, with the same threadbare jacket. For the chorus scenes, the conductor guided me, helped me keep the measure and showed me the right gestures to keep it credible when I was conducting the children.
How is acting with children special?
I've made many movies with children. They guide you. The characters work themselves out through what's there in front of you. Here, I was in a classroom during a heat wave with forty kids who were very nice but who could wear you out with their energy. To get them out of the classroom took fifteen minutes but getting them back in took two hours. The set was a mixture of "goofing around" and strictness. It was very emotional and it's wonderful when you love kids. As it happens, a few of my films were on TV during the shoot. That made them both like me and respect me more. As soon as work was over, they came to tell me about their family stuff, their heartbreaks, or just things that had made them laugh. The last day was very emotional terrible. All the kids were in tears. I really felt like a teacher who was leaving his pupils kids at the end of the school year. I knew them all and , knew all their quirks. The ones you notice right away, the ones who lay low, the ones you think have a bright future, others where you feel like they've got a rougher road to walk. And all the time you have to be careful not to favor anyone. And of course I had to help them act, to stay natural and at the same time forcing them to listen to me. That's where For that, my experiences in shooting Scout toujours or Monsieur Batignole came in very handy.
Why did you choose to be act as associate producer on Les Choristes?
It's a way of showing that I believe in this film, of getting involved. But the one who took most of the risks was Jacques Perrin.. He had no qualms about re-shooting scenes, about providing the means to make it work. He knows that's what money is for - to make movies.
Did you know your fellow actors, François Berléand, Kad Merad?
I knew them, but I had never worked with them. I never managed to do a movie with François Berléand and he does two hundred a year! He's fabulous and we got along really well. I could say as much about Kad, who showed that he's really an actor, not just a comedian comic.
What were the scenes you were most afraid to shoot?ere there scenes you had trepidations about?
The chorus scenes. But in fact they turned out to be absolutely magic because the kids, who were singing to a recording at the beginning of the shoot, most of them very badly, wound up singing very well by the end of the film, just like in the story. I discovered the strength of the singing voice. You know, a lot of people sing in choruses. Singing is very liberating.
What do you take away from this film?
The film begins in clouds and ends in the sunshine. I don't know if it's because I often feel like an aging child, but this shoot with all those kids, that nostalgia for childhood, all those emotions have something in common with a fantastic time at a in summer camp.
INTERVIEW WITH COMPOSER AND CONDUCTOR BRUNO COULAIS
Along with Christophe Barratier, I travel through France looking for the children's chorus to sing the music in the film. Although he has little hope, Christophe is also looking for a little singer who could appear in the film as Pierre Morhange, the main role, rather than using a child actor and dubbing him afterward. One day, we're in Lyons, near the Cathédrale de Fourvière, visiting the Saint-Marc school's Petits Chanteurs group. As we walk up the junior high school steps, we hear the faint echo of a Purcell melody can be heard, led by an incredible soprano voice. We will soon recognize identify it as that of a twelve-year-old boy with all the charm and good looks it takes to play a leading role. His name is Jean-Baptiste Maunier. Christophe immediately auditions tests him. He's got it. The chorus also, is excellent - they are chosen. The choruses heard in the film are supposed to be composed by the main character, Clément Mathieu, a good musician but one who is certainly not in the avant-garde of musical currents… So I had to respect a tonal style while avoiding the clichés which go along with that repertoire. With the support of Nicolas Porte, the chorus' conductor, and thanks to the children's talent, we were able to work well before the shoot, looking for styles and colors… Trying, starting over… The singing was recorded prior to the shoot, partially re-recorded afterward and, finally, bolstered by additional orchestration. Music was the film's subject. The progress of the chorus had to be evident throughout the film and simple, unpretentious music, which drew more on the emotion than on stylistic considerations, had to be composed. March, 2003.
|
|
